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The flowers and stalks of lavender were customarily placed among linen or other clothes as a preservative against moths during storage, and from this comes the phrase lay up in lavender, meaning preserve carefully for future use.

lavender and old lace denoting a gentle and old-fashioned style; originally the title of a novel (1902) by Myrtle Reed, later dramatized; the phrase was reworked in Joseph Kesselring's play Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), featuring two respectable spinster sisters who are given to poisoning their lodgers.

lavender list an informal name for the draft of Harold Wilson's last honours list, supposedly first drawn up by his secretary Marcia Falkender on a sheet of lavender notepaper, and later regarded as having some names of questionable merit.